Beneath the Same Heaven

by Anne Marie Ruff

  Janet hurries over to Andrew, “All right baby, not him.” She grabs his arm mid-strike. “Don’t hit him, he’s one of the good guys.” She places her hands on his shoulder and he pivots in place. He takes a few steps toward me before tripping and banging his head on the corner of the coffee table. He lets out a little cry then unleashes a terrible scream. Janet reaches to lift him, but I rush to him, gather him to me. I am his mother. I will be the one to comfort him, to wash away the blood, to examine the cut, not her.

  I retreat to the bathroom, so I can escape their eyes, the eyes of Ted’s family, the violent eyes on the television screen. I hold Andrew’s head to my shoulder, trying to muffle his shrill cries. I clutch a washcloth at his brow. After a moment his sounds diminish to whimpers. I pull away the perfectly white terrycloth, see the little blot of blood. I rinse out the cloth, wash the spot as I stroke his head. “Don’t worry, you’ll be fine.” The superficial cut will heal quickly, but I welcome it as a pretense for us to leave. I open the door to start making my way out.

  “So what’ll happen now?” Amanda asks from the sofa. “Does this mean the wars will end?”

  “Do you think my friend Jeremy’s cousin will come back from Iraq?” Valerie picks up the train of thought.

  “I don’t know girls, bin Laden wasn’t running the wars. But even if the troops don’t come home, the end of Osama bin Laden is a very good thing. We should be very happy about this.”

  My stomach tightens like a fist before a punch. I want to tell the girls, Of course the wars won’t end, Iraq is about oil and regional occupation, not terrorism—the media has blurred the issues, the politicians are delighted for us to confuse the meanings of these two military campaigns. Arguments and rationales that I had carefully edited when I was at the journal, balanced opinions I had exhorted reporters to articulate tumble through my head. I want to recite them, lay out my logic, convince them of the historical folly of trying to tame Afghanistan, of trying to impose a democracy on a foreign culture, of thinking the rule of law could outshine centuries of clan-based loyalties.

  But I do not speak. It doesn’t matter if I am right.

  Michael tugs quietly at Ted, who is now sitting next to the girls on the couch, glued to the continuing coverage. “Uncle Ted? Can we go back to the bike?”

  I take a step toward Michael, perhaps a bit too forcefully. “We’re going home now, Michael. Andrew needs to take a nap. And this has nothing to do with you.”

  “But Mom, what about the bicycle? Uncle Ted’s teaching me to ride.” The weight of the disappointment pulls his shoulders down.

  “No. Ted is watching the television,” I say, perhaps too crisply. I kneel down beside my boy, hoping to soften the blow. “Perhaps we can take the bike with us. I will teach you to ride.”

  “Promise?”

  “Promise.”

  I walk from my cubicle to the water cooler and go through the motions of taking a drink. From here I can see into Ed’s office. He is not on the phone. He doesn’t yet appear stressed about the afternoon deadline. I knock on his door and he motions for me to enter.

  “What can I do for you?”

  His chairs are stacked with newspapers so there is no place to sit.

  “May I?” I gesture to the obstructed chair seat.

  “Oh excuse me.” He pushes his chair out so he can get to the stack.

  “I’ve got it.” As I lift a dozen newspapers to set them aside, I see the above-the-fold photo of today’s paper. A crowd of people celebrate bin Laden’s death; waving American flags, arms outstretched, mouths open mid-cheer, illuminated by the streetlights that surround the construction site at ground zero.

  I sit down and point to the paper. “Actually, this is what I want to talk about.”

  “You’re wondering why we chose to lead with a photograph of New York? We thought about going with a photo from San Diego, but the celebrations were more subdued here. We thought that New York was more emblematic of the end of that chapter.”

  “But that’s the problem, I don’t think it will be an end. People the world over who have followed Osama bin Laden will feel obliged to avenge his death. I feel less safe this morning than I did yesterday morning.” I look down at my naked fingers, the absence of rings marking my isolation. “I know how seriously Pakistanis and Muslims take their revenge.”

  He is quiet for a moment. “I see your point. So what do you think would be a better option? You think we shouldn’t have killed him?”

  “Why not capture him, put him on trial? Don’t we follow the rule of law?”

  He purses his lips, thinking. “Let’s play that out. Say the SEALS break into the compound under cover of night, and imagine that by some good stroke, they’re able to get Osama bin Laden out of his home alive, never minding the inevitable firefight his guards will put up.” He puts his wrists out in front of himself, as if they are cuffed together. “And we bring him back to American soil in a military plane. The Pakistanis will love this—we make a big show of how they were protecting our most wanted enemy as we set him up on trial here. And which court of law should we use? A regular civilian court? A court martial? Like we have handled with the detainees at Guantanamo Bay?” He places one hand over his heart and the other over an imaginary Bible. “And suppose we get old Osama to take the oath of truth over our trusty Bible, what truth do you think he’s going to spew? His truth about the return of the caliphate? His truth about the coming victory of Islam over the infidels?”

  “Well, that would be pretty incriminating, right? And don’t we enshrine freedom of speech? Doesn’t he have the right to speak on the witness stand?”

  “Are you really worried about bin Laden’s first amendment right?” Ed leans in. “And let’s continue with this. Suppose we do somehow manage the Herculean security feat of keeping bin Laden alive to stand trial, and preventing some wacko extremist from blowing up the courthouse, or the prison, or the vehicle that transports him between the two, and we manage to get a conviction, and assuming he hasn’t died from kidney failure by then, what’s his sentence? The American people couldn’t possibly accept anything short of a death sentence.” He brings his hands together on the desk. “One way or another, we had to kill Osama.”

  My nostrils flare with inhalation. “We had to take our revenge.”

  “Yes. And I have to say after what he did, he deserved what he got, and I think the President did it pretty well.”

  I am silent. I gaze down at the images of patriots, people intoxicated with the glory of our country’s revenge. On other days I have seen images of other people, men with dark beards wearing pale kurta pajamas similarly imbibing on the wine of revenge. Different countries. Different perpetrators. Common emotion.

  “What’re you worried about, Kathryn? Are you concerned that your connection to the bombing somehow singles you out for an attack? Seems to me it would be just the opposite.”

  “No, I guess it’s not that I worry about my physical safety. But I worry about what this says about us. What does this mean for us as a nation? Who are we if this is how we treat our enemies?” I press my lips together, feel the lipstick between them. “When I married Rashid I went to great pains to describe Muslims as peace-loving people. I was open minded about his culture to a fault. I explained away their tendency toward violence as an artifact of the British empire and Partition. I was so naive. I looked the devil in the eye and remarked about how rich were the colors of his irises.”

  I look Ed in the eye, feel a force rising in my chest.

  “I hate their system of justice.” I clench my jaws together, feel the pressure behind my eyes. I fight back my tears, I did not come to Ed’s office to cry. “I hate the way it rips apart families, not just mine, countless families across the region. I hate the way it elevates death over the living, glorifies the suffering of others as the thrill of revenge. I want nothing to do with it. I have reengineered my life, I have amputated my memories so that my sons and I will not have to live with the ugliness
of revenge. And now…” a tear bursts onto my cheek despite my efforts, “and now I feel like I see the same ugliness in my own country, these people who are supposedly my people.” I let my hand rest over the newspaper photo in my lap. “I just want to believe in a place where people settle their disputes in a civilized way, where you know that if you behave according to the rules, you won’t have to fear.”

  He gives me an avuncular smile and moves to me. With a little heave he lifts the double pile of newspapers and sets them on the floor. Sitting next to me, he exhales a sigh. “Kathryn, you should be proud of yourself. After all you’ve been through, you still hold on to an idealism. I’ve been in the news business a long time. We’ve printed every kind of barbarism, and crooked political deal, every corrupt self-interested banking scheme and bombing the world can dish up,” he thumps his hand on the stack of newspapers. “I have achieved a nearly perfect cynicism about the world. I hate all systems almost equally, I maintain dismally low expectations of any politician, businessman, military leader. I’m almost never disappointed.”

  “So then why do you bother with any of it?”

  “I figure, the only thing I can depend on, the only actions I can control in this world are my own. I no longer care if the paper is elevating the debate, or illuminating the conversations of our subscribers. I know my job is to send out ink on paper everyday that gets peoples’ attention, so we can sell those peoples’ attention to dish soap manufacturers and car dealers.” He picks up a newspaper and lets it flop back onto the pile. “But what matters to me is the people in my newsroom. Do they take pride in their work? Do I create a place where they can feel respected, where they can do their work without interference, where they can learn from each other? If my reporters go home and can’t use me as an excuse to beat their wives, or drink an entire six pack, if they can take their paycheck and go out for dinner on the weekends, I figure I’ve done my job well enough.” He runs a hand over his thinning hair. “Saving the world, and perfecting systems…that’s not my job.” He looks at me, reaches out to take the paper from me. “It’s not your job either. Your job is to take the best care of your boys that you can. Bring me some good stories so you can keep a roof over their head, and then show them love even though they live in this world where you can see hatred and violence everywhere you choose to look.”

  “But what about the rule of law? Doesn’t that mean anything to us as a country? Doesn’t it mean anything to you?”

  “Certainly nice if you can get it. God bless the ACLU and the human rights watchers. If they continue to do their work, and you continue to believe in the law, you’re probably on the right track.”

  I squeeze my hands until my knuckles turn white.

  “Kathryn, don’t think so much. We can only carry little bits of the world on our shoulders, not the whole thing. Take care of your bit.”

  “Take care of my bit.” I nod, release my hands.

  Chapter 7

  Five years after the bombing

  * * *

  “Mom, my cape!” Andrew shrieks as we return to the apartment, his Superman Halloween costume caught in the door.

  Michael rushes back, holds Andrew’s chest so he doesn’t move, and carefully opens the door. “OK Andrew? Superman can still fly.”

  I pour myself a glass of wine as the boys unload their bags of trick-or-treat candy on the kitchen table.

  “Mom, I want to eat everything!” Andrew lays his face down on the pile of candy, as if to hug it.

  “How much can we have?” Michael’s fingers have already clutched a couple of candy bars.

  “You can eat as much as you want, but remember,” I point to a yellowed piece of paper on the refrigerator, a set of rules I wrote out shortly after bin Laden’s killing.

  “Which one?” Andrew pushes his candies around.

  “Capen Code number four,” I touch the paper, “you must ‘Understand that your choices will have consequences.’ So eat as much as you want, but if you eat too many, you’ll probably feel sick.”

  “Awesome! As much as we want!” Andrew tears open candy after candy, stuffing his mouth.

  Michael—ever the older and wiser—reminds his brother, “Andrew, you’re a lot smaller than me, you’re only five, so don’t try to eat as much as me.”

  I strike a match and light several candles on an altar, the flames illuminating photographs of a handful of people. I have set out flowers, chocolates, good coffee, even a tin of caviar I keep only for this purpose.

  “Mom, why do you put out food for photographs every Halloween?” Michael asks between bites.

  “Dia de los muertos, the day of the dead,” I blow out the match, adjust a picture frame with a photo of my grandparents on their wedding day, stoic expressions and starched clothes. “This is how Oscar taught us to honor people that’ve come and gone.”

  The first Halloween I had worked at the Sentinel, Oscar had told me he populated his altar not only with his loved ones who had died, but with newspaper photographs of people in Juarez who had been killed by the drug cartels; people who might have been schoolmates, people who could have been his neighbors, even people with whom he had no connection. Maybe it’s pointless, he had told me, but I believe the souls of dead victims want to be remembered, want to have a little of the life that someone stole from them. Thank God my girls don’t have to live in the danger, but I still live with the death of that place.

  I dust off three pictures of people I never met, pictures I photocopied from the Sentinel’s archives more than a year after the paper had included them in coverage of the bombing; a 36-year old man on his way to the office, a 52-year old man on his way to a Santa Monica garden he maintained, and a 19-year old girl on her way to morning classes at UCLA.

  “So who are all the people?” Michael stands next to me and points to each photo in turn.

  I tell him the names of my grandparents and his great aunts, a childhood friend who died in a boating accident.

  “And what about these people?” Michael points to the newspaper portraits.

  “Those are people I want to respect.”

  “What people?” Andrew joins us, flapping his cape up and down.

  “These people,” Michael points again. “Why do you want to respect them?”

  “Just because.” I step back to the kitchen. Each year I avoid this question. I am willing to acknowledge I have some connection to them, to ask forgiveness of their souls, but not to speak of it with the children.

  “‘Just because’ why?”

  Michael has never asked why there is no picture of his father on the altar. Maybe I should start adding other victims, other people I don’t know so these three pictures aren’t so obvious.

  “Because I said so. Now stop asking questions.”

  Andrew flaps his cape again. “Can I eat the chocolate for the dead people?”

  “No!”

  “They can’t eat it,” he says indignantly.

  “No more questions. Eat your own chocolate.”

  Chapter 8

  Ten years after the bombing

  * * *

  The security guard at the bank—they seem to get younger each year—leads me back to the safe deposit box viewing room. I repeat my routine, it only takes me a minute or two; usually I don’t even bother to sit down.

  I pull the envelope from my purse, double check to make sure there is nothing inside the layers of paper besides the 25 one hundred dollar bills—there never is, but this has become habit—and slide it in the box next to the previous envelope. Even after all these years, the nightmare still haunts me whenever the envelopes arrive. The next day, I feel angry and bewildered as if the Rashid who kicks me in my subconscious were real.

  The box is nearly full. Out of some morbid sense of accomplishment, I take out the envelopes and count them. Forty. Like clockwork, an envelope has arrived every three months, four times a year for the last decade. Ten years since I became the martyr’s wife, ten years of rejecting someone else’s
reality, repressing the past, asserting an identity of my choosing. One hundred thousand dollars in this box that I have rejected, money I have taken out of circulation, power I have kept in suspended animation. How long will the envelopes continue to come? Who sends them? I can barely imagine the fidelity, the dedication of the organization, the sender.

  At the bottom of the box, almost forgotten, rest two rings. The symbols of my marriage, inert, intact. Leave, I tell myself. Walk out. Replace the envelopes and lock the box. Don’t disturb these memories. But something propels me to take the rings. So easily the small band slides onto my ring finger. So naturally does the man’s band slide right next to it, the engraved words encircling my finger. I remember the Rashid of the nightmares. Sometimes he appears alive, sometimes dead. In the nightmare I always scream. I scream for his safety, I scream in anger, I scream out of fear. He never responds with words. “God damn it!” I say out loud. I shake the larger ring back into the box with a hollow jangling sound. I look at the smaller ring still on my finger. What if I walked out of here wearing this ring? What would change? Even without it, I haven’t acted like a single woman, available to another man. Have I been faithful to a memory? What the fuck am I waiting for?

  I pull the ring off and throw it back into the box. Those rings can have each other.

  “So Ed tells me you cover sports. How did you first get interested in sports?” Ed’s friend, Johannes, lifts his water glass.

  “I’m a journalist and I needed a job. Nothing more to it.” Despite my evening dress and high heels, I respond as if he is an interrogator, not a date.

  “Fair enough,” Johannes smiles. “And do you enjoy it? Ed says you’ve got a remarkable perspective on sports. How did he describe it? That you see it as a ‘cultural phenomena,’ not just a bunch of scores.”